."Anybody who plays golf will tell you that you play against yourself."~ Martin Sheen

We tend to make life hard on ourselves don't we? We complicate things. Rather than take a look at ourselves and what we need to do to improve our life we look at the course, conditions, clubs and competing characters. Whether in business or life we stroll along hitting the same strokes that we have now become familiar with, getting about the same old score as we always do and stopping, every now and again, to congratulate ourselves on a good shot. Then ~ When we stumble occasionally into the rough we... Well we tend to look around everywhere except where we should - within. We all tend to put our lives on auto pilot and never take a moment to break down what we really need to do ~ To Consistently Beat Par. So what do we need to do? To beat par in business, and indeed life, we need to look at:

P = Psychology

We need to get out of our own way. The person who beats us in life and business is always us - period. Whether it be resistance to learning, changing or modifying our behavior - We beat ourselves.

A = Actions

Do we adjust and change our swing, our habits, our follow through and our focus? Do we keep score of ourselves and how the changes we have made to our swing bring better results? Do we constantly strive to perfect, measure and both honestly and truthfully score ourselves?

R = Relationships

We need coaches. We need someone who can watch our swing with a critical eye. No matter how good we think our self appraisal is - it's biased, prejudiced and fraught with rationalizations. We need Friends and Demons. Demons that will hold us accountable to strive, drive and deliver. Demons that will help us deliver on a performance we can be proud of. Naturally, we need friends to enjoy that performance with.